Day: April 8, 2018

Alfy, who has been busy bringing in musical artists to perform at his Arena Live Music Stage in Sansar, has announced a new competition called the Voices of Sansar! The contest seems to be directed towards Second Life performers, but really it’s open to anybody who wants to compete.

The grand prize, according to Alfy, is L$50,000 (although why the prize would be awarded in Linden dollars when the contest is in Sansar is bit of a mystery to me. Maybe because right now it’s easier to pay avatars in Second Life than in Sansar? That must be it. Anyways, it works out to US$200, which is a nice prize.

The weekly prizes are US$50 total, split into $30 for first prize and $20 for second prize. Winners are paid via Paypal, as there’s currently no way to pay avatars directly in Sansar. (But that’s coming!)

There is a stipulation before you can compete. Galen, the scripter behind the game, says:

Remember that everyone who has attended at least one practice and logged at least one game is eligible to compete today.

Practices and training sessions are held Mondays through Fridays at 9:00 a.m. and 5:00 p.m. Pacific Time/Sansar Time. Make friends and start crafting your own HoverDerby teams!

Tournaments are held every Sunday at 11:00 a.m. Pacific Time/Sansar Time at the HoverDerby experience. Spectators can watch the game from the new HoverDerby Lounge experience.

See you there! Or, if you prefer, you can watch Drax’s livestream of the event on YouTube! Here’s the link.

Like this:

Over the past several years I have noticed myself using Second Life for a particular, rather peculiar purpose, one that I certainly didn’t intend to use it for at first, and one that I’m sure Linden Lab didn’t forsee either. I find myself dressing up my avatar, visiting a club, turning up the sound on my speakers, and then heading for the sofa to put my feet up with my iPad to read or browse Reddit and simply listen to some music. In other words, Second Life has become my radio station!

Sometimes I’m in the mood for some classic, romantic standards, and so I throw on an elegant ballgown and some expensive-looking jewelry, and strike a pose at the side of the dancefloor at Frank’s Place Jazz Club (despite the name, they don’t play jazz that often). I never go to Frank’s to dance; I go to listen to the music. I don’t need to be sitting at my computer to do that. As long as I meet their formal dress code, I can stand there and listen as long as I want; sometimes I plant myself there all day while I am doing other things!

Other times, I’ll decide to throw on a daring little minidress and visit FMD to listen to a stream of music that would not be out of place in a hip, fashionable modern club scene. It’s not music I would listen to on a regular radio station at all, but sometimes I’m in the mood for something different.

I’m starting to think that Adam Frisby was smart to build his virtual world on top of the Unity game engine, because he can leverage off all the development work that has taken place on that platform. For example, he already has great in-world vehicle physics for things like dune buggies and race cars.

And Adam can take advantage of all those cool Unity building tools. Of course, there’s a lot of work to integrate such tools with Sinespace, but the payoffs could be big. In the official Sansar Discord channel, creator Agustine shared with me a promotional video of a Unity building tool called ProBuilder. It reminds me of the Second Life in-world build tools, but on steroids!

Pretty impressive! Can you imagine having the ability to build so easily in a virtual world? And can you imagine how popular Sinespace could be if they could integrate such a tool? The Second Life crowd would be all over it!

And you can already build some truly beautiful experiences within Sinespace. I’ve already blogged about a few. Take a look at these pictures I took of the Sinespace region I am currently in. Trees swaying gently in the breeze, grassy rolling hills… it makes me want to explore!

And Agustine told me about a new enticement to explore: gifts! Hidden away in some of the Sinespace regions are gift boxes like the one in the picture above. Find them and click on them, and you win a small amount of in-game currency! I’m not going to tell you in which region I found this particular gift; come to Sinespace and explore for yourself 😉

Now, Sinespace is not perfect. For example, I still cannot get the new VR client to work with my Oculus Rift setup, even after several attempts (other people have been luckier than me). And, annoyingly, now when I launch the new Sinespace client in desktop (non-VR) mode, it also loads SteamVR and Oculus Home automatically, which means I have to work around the rather annoying SteamVR “Headset not tracking” pop-up window. But this is a minor complaint, and one that I’m sure will be fixed in time.

The fact is, Sinespace should be getting a lot more press attention than it has been to date. Yesterday I was talking with Andrew, the producer of my upcoming show Metaverse Newscast (hopefully launching later this year), and we agree: Sinespace is one of the “Big Four” where some of the most interesting developments are happening in the metaverse (the other three are High Fidelity, Sansar, and VRChat).